Wikileaks tells the truth at last

If you haven't read the Wikileaks Iraq war documents, at least read the NYT synopsis:

According to the synopsis of the WikiLeaks documents by The New York Times, the death toll in 2006 reached beyond 3,000 one month.

Late last year, [Ellen Knickmeyer] sat in on a seminar at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government led by a former Bush official in Iraq and heard her say matter-of-factly that more than 1,000 people died in one day in the immediate killing after the Samarra bombing.

But as the WikiLeaks documents show, Casey and Rumsfeld must have known that all along, owing to the accounts from their forces. Despite the statements of the top U.S. commanders at the time, it wasn’t the journalists in Baghdad who were lying.

Butchers knowingly lying.

Is there anyone left who will defend this war? (John McCain? Sarah Palin?)

Meanwhile, Wikileaks Superhero Julian Assange walked out on a CNN interview when the subject turned to his personal life. People are currently discussing whether that was the right thing for him to do.

And what do you all think?

Pentagon liars exposed

From MEET THE PRESS (NBC) 2005: Tim Russert talks to Wesley K. Clark, center; Wayne A. Downing; Montgomery Meigs, right; and Barry R. McCaffrey, foreground. (photo from New York Times)

~*~

I woke up this morning to find Mr Daisy growling at the computer screen and gesticulating madly. I knew immediately, it was somehow related to Dubya and his friends. I was right.

Please check out the Sunday New York Times article about various news networks' so-called "military analysts" who, it turns out, have extensive connections to military contractors profiting off the war strategies they are being interviewed about. Are you surprised?

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.

“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.

It's an amazing, if predictably harrowing, investigative article. And it just gets worse:

Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.”

Though many analysts are paid network consultants, making $500 to $1,000 per appearance, in Pentagon meetings they sometimes spoke as if they were operating behind enemy lines, interviews and transcripts show. Some offered the Pentagon tips on how to outmaneuver the networks, or as one analyst put it to Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, “the Chris Matthewses and the Wolf Blitzers of the world.” Some warned of planned stories or sent the Pentagon copies of their correspondence with network news executives. Many — although certainly not all — faithfully echoed talking points intended to counter critics.

“Good work,” Thomas G. McInerney, a retired Air Force general, consultant and Fox News analyst, wrote to the Pentagon after receiving fresh talking points in late 2006. “We will use it.”

Again and again, records show, the administration has enlisted analysts as a rapid reaction force to rebut what it viewed as critical news coverage, some of it by the networks’ own Pentagon correspondents. For example, when news articles revealed that troops in Iraq were dying because of inadequate body armor, a senior Pentagon official wrote to his colleagues: “I think our analysts — properly armed — can push back in that arena.”

Real scumbags. (Here is a complete video report.)

~*~

The Disability Blog Carnival is over at Abnormal Diversity, so you should go over and read. The invaluable matttbastard (I remembered all the t's, mattt!) at bastard.logic pointed me to a rather wonky piece by Michael Bérubé, and I just MUST quote this one paragraph:

And I have to admit that I’ve been mightily vexed by this phenomenon in recent years. Not by Hillary Clinton herself, mind you – by the phenomenon of the avoidance of disability qua disability. It’s as if we Americans have been talking about disability all our lives, as Molière’s M. Jourdain has been speaking in prose, without realizing it. Remember that debate about SCHIP? You know, the one we lost on Bush’s veto? What the hell was that about? It was about disability, folks – about children suffering catastrophic illnesses and traumatic injuries for which their parents couldn’t (and their parents’ dastardly, moustache-twirling health-insurance providers wouldn’t) provide. Vets returning from Iraq with PTSD or TBI (post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury) and being warehoused and/or underserved and/or neglected by VA hospitals? Uh, well, once again, here we’re talking about disability. Why in the world do we frame these things as matters of “health” or “employment” or “veterans’ benefits,” when doing so prevents us from realizing that we’re all touching different appendages of the 8000-pound elephant in the room? The subject is disability, people. It’s about our common frailty and vulnerability. Get used to it.

~*~

Left: Quilt by Sandi Garris, at Artisphere.


Some other fun stuff you should be checking out:

Thene blogs a fascinating online conversation about marriage.

Zen Denizen's amusing resume: Hire her today!

A BRAND NEW BABY GOAT on Smokey Mountain Breakdown!

Aishwarya blogs about the importing of cheerleading to India. (Hey, we're really sorry about that!)

Theriomorph says these photographs are old, but I have never seen them before. The pics show a sled dog and polar bear, making friends. Too adorable!

I had this Saturday off, so it's been a great weekend for me--as I browse my favorite bloggers, drink ginseng tea and stay out of the rain. Hope yours is going well, too.

~*~

LATE EDIT FROM READER NAMED 'KELLY' (no link, or I would!): FYI - given the photo from the Times article you've got posted - you might want to let your readers know that one of the generals in the photo was not one of those enlisted by the Pentagon - in fact he was specifically not included, largely because of his criticisms of the Bush Admin and its handling of Iraq and Afghanistan...General Wesley Clark.

Thanks, Kelly!--D

Lies, Inc.

Left: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, photo from PBS.


From Sue at Head On Radio:

Lottirj sent along this link to a 9 page GQ article featuring Colin Powell. I’m not going to give any of it away here. Just go here and read it all for yourself. I honestly think Powell is the key to impeachment. The one thing he constantly denies though is that the pre-war intell was all lies. He admits to it being wrong, but not fabricated. Maybe he should see the fact cooking and cherry picking evidence we’ve all seen.

This is an incredible document. Read it and weep.

For example, Powell is asked: Are you sorry you didn’t question things more forcefully?

At the time, when I felt the president might not have focused on all the potential consequences, I said I needed to see him. I went to the White House and had a private session with him. I told him that we could knock over Saddam’s regime but he needed to understand what we would be faced with once we had done that. It was my “When you break it, you own it” speech. I said that this invasion would tie up the better part of 40 percent of our army for an indefinite period of time. It will be hugely expensive. You will be dealing with this for a long time to come. I said, “Take it to the U.N. See if we can get something from the U.N. that might allow us to avoid this war.” He said, “Let’s share this with the others.” And a few days later, we had a discussion with everyone, some by videoconference. They eventually agreed that we should take it to the U.N., some more willingly than others. Dick [Cheney] didn’t think it would work, and Don [Rumsfeld] I was not sure about, because you couldn’t always tell his opinion. Had I done my duty? I think so.

Do you feel responsible for giving the U.N. flawed intelligence?

I didn’t know it was flawed. Everybody was using it. The CIA was saying the same thing for two years. I gave perhaps the most accurate presentation of the intelligence as we knew it—without any of the “Mushroom clouds are going to show up tomorrow morning” and all the rest of that stuff. But the fact of the matter is that a good part of it was wrong, and I am sorry that it was wrong.

Read the whole mealy-mouthed interview at GQ.